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Talk:The Videssos Cycle
Thoughts on the V Cycle The back cover bills this as "one of the most beloved series in fantasy." I assume that's an exaggeration. The overall plot is passable, and the characters are likable and dynamic, but the page count needed a few editing jobs to cut it down to size. A large part of the text is just a long list of military maneuvers in one battle after another, and the battles all begin to feel the same after a while. The series was first described to me as the Roman Empire meets Middle Earth, but it's really just a Roman Empire story with a thin veneer of fantasy tacked on. I wonder why HT felt the need to create a parallel world rather than simply setting a historical fantasy in the Roman Empire. Should I read the Krispos books, or do they have the same level of tediousness?JonathanMarkoff (talk) 09:03, May 30, 2017 (UTC) :It started out as LotR fanfic, then mutated with HT integrating his knowledge of Byzantine history. I suspect HT kept the fantasy setting as fantasy works that are closely based on the Byzantine Empire sell better than historical works set in the Byzantine Empire. As far as beloved, well, even non-HT fans think highly of it. By some metric, it is beloved. TR (talk) 14:37, May 30, 2017 (UTC) :I read Krispos before I read the Cycle--years and years before, actually. Without the grounds for comparison, I liked it a lot (well, the first two books, anyway). If you've read the Cycle first I suspect it wouldn't hold up as well. :Book 1 is a good piece for introducing characters and establishing the situation they'll be facing, and is also a very serviceable introduction to how the Videssian universe works if you're not already familiar. :Book 2 is the feature presentation, a desperate battle to defeat Rhavas. Rhavas is not a POV, and Krispos (the book's only POV) never observes him up close. Add to that the fact that he's only got one book in which to do everything he has to do, and he doesn't cast nearly the long shadow that he does in the Cycle. His actions are disturbingly dark and gratuitously violent, he's not nearly as frightening this time out. The process of discovering his identity is written as tense and suspenseful, but if you've already read the Cycle then you've seen the Patriarch spoil the whole thing with an offhanded comment. After all is said and done, Krispos works very hard to ensure that future generations will be aware that Rhavas is still out there, and won't have to figure out everything as they go if and when he reemerges. So why he was able to take everyone by surprise in the Gavras emperors' era is beyond me. :Book 3 is a half-assed postscript presumably slapped on for purely commercial reasons. It adds nothing. If you're not a neurotically compulsive completionist, skip it. Turtle Fan (talk) Character Templates Jonathan has been changing the "|appearance =" to "The Videssos Cycle" when the character is in all four volumes rather than list the books out. Notionally, I am fine with this but I think using the Legion Cycle redirect would be clearer than "Videssos Cycle". The latter could be confused for the whole dozen (or whatever) volume legendarium rather than the four volume sub-series. This is the reason I made it "The Legion Cycle Characters" cat when I first started working on this series. What do you think? ML4E (talk) 18:06, January 27, 2018 (UTC) :Unfortunately the publisher insists on calling it "The Videssos Cycle", even though at this stage "Legion Cycle" would be more helpful for a whole project that has come to be called "Videssos series". So I think we should follow their lead, hence my decision to create a Videssos Cycle specific character template. :I think by doing that, the point about which volumes are listed and how they are listed is resolved--we just treat the series like we would with any other series work. TR (talk) 18:18, January 27, 2018 (UTC)